Boston College, Carroll School of Management

Intro Post

Hi guys!! I hope everyone is having an enjoyable summer! My name is Katie and I am a junior in CSOM studying Finance and Entrepreneurship and minoring in International Studies with a focus in globalization. I am from Walpole, MA (about 30 minutes south of Chestnut Hill) and am REALLY looking forward to taking TechTrek East next semester and getting to know you all :).

At BC, I am the student manager of the new ~College Road Cafe and Marketplace~ (aka On The Fly @ Mac), so if anyone is looking for an on-campus job next semester, I can totally hook you up. I also am on the club ice hockey team and will be an iHP (individual health plan) Health Coach next year. Additionally, I am involved in Women in Business and Appa—I went to Detroit my freshman year and Chatham, NC last spring. Last year, I also participated in PULSE and was placed at the West End House, a Boys and Girls Club in Allston. At my time there, I served in the Health and Wellness program, where I participated in gym activities and led nutrition-guided cooking classes, along with aiding middle school students through their homework hour. PULSE was by far my favorite, most rewarding course I have taken at BC, but we will see if TechTrek East can live up to that standard 🤔.

I love being outdoors, exercising, playing with children, and baking. I also am super passionate about startups and Venture Capital. This summer, I am in the Silicon Valley participating in the True Entrepreneur Corps Fellowship, a program run through True Ventures. I simply cannot put into words how amazing this opportunity has been, and I would HIGHLY encourage any sophomores or juniors to apply for this program for next summer (the application deadline is December— hit me up if you want to know more about applying!!).

This fellowship matches you with a startup in True’s portfolio, and I am fortunate enough to work at Hatch Baby, a smart baby products company. In my role at Hatch Baby, I help out with weekly invoices, cash forecasts, reconciliations, inventory management, marketing campaigns, and QA testing. We also got an offer to do a test run of our products with Costco—an exchange in which I have been a main contact point in driving forward. I intern here for four days a week, and then on Thursdays, all the fellows head into True Ventures’ headquarters, where entrepreneurs give speeches and the fellows partake in an afternoon outing in the city. It has been so fun to get to know the other fellows and compare our experiences at our respective startups.

Photos of the group at some of our Thursday night activities

What surprised me most about both my time at True and my time at Hatch Baby was the sense of collaboration and genuine care for others’ success. As a finance concentrator, I am getting a glimpse at how cutthroat the world of Wall Street can be. In San Francisco, however, I believe there is a culture shift. The guest speakers and founders at True truly care about our growth this summer, and whenever I reached out to them after their talks, they were always more than willing to help answer whatever questions I had for them and to meet up again later.

The TEC Fellows at True University, a two-day conference at UC Berkeley hosted by True Ventures where founders participate in workshops and hear from amazing leaders & entrepreneurs (it was SO COOL🤩)

At Hatch Baby—a company of about fifteen employees—there is an insane amount of collaboration and accountability. With most employees being parents themselves, I was awestruck at how the co-founders managed to find such an amazing team that is so dedicated to the Hatch Baby mission. These people literally look forward to working everyday, and their energy is truly contagious. The company was founded in 2012 by the couple Ann and Dave Weiss, and together they make up the most amazing complimentary leadership team. Dave is quiet, thoughtful, and manages all internal operations. He has technical experience as the CTO of BabyCenter, where he met Ann. Ann, on the other hand, is a serial entrepreneur who is energetic, optimistic, and fierce. She is the face of the company and does all of the fundraising and PR. She’s a fearless leader and no challenge is too large for her to tackle. She holds a clear and inspiring vision for the company and can enroll anyone she meets in that vision as well.

Co-founders Ann and Dave pitching their idea on Sharktank—check it out!!(they rock and I’m obsessed in case you couldn’t tell already)

Okay, that’s enough rambling on my summer experience (sorry in advance because I will probably bring it up every other sentence in class). What I hope to get out of TechTrek East is a better look into the tech space specifically on the East Coast. By taking advantage of the Bay Area this summer, I somewhat forged my own TechTrek West experience by attending workshops, lectures, and open houses at Madison Reed, Airbnb, Uber, Twitter, OpenROV, Handshake, and more. Additionally, I have met so many other interns at Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Tesla that I feel like I have caught an accurate portrayal of working and living in the Bay Area (lowkey also met Steve Wozniak’s son in an uber). From here, I would love to transfer this lens to the east coast in order to determine where I can best be fulfilled and make a difference with my career. With recruiting for next summer right around the corner, I am very much conflicted about which career path to pursue. On one hand, I am considering a structured, somewhat hierarchical role in Asset Management or Consulting where I could learn business fundamentals and have a great platform to expand upon later on, but on the other hand, I love the passion, flexibility, and scrappiness that startups exhibit. My hope for this class is to blend both of these interests and understand how the east coast can provide a blend of both corporate and startup mentalities (or if that is even possible 😅).

I have visited Google in NYC last fall through an MABC trip, and I really loved seeing the energy all the BC alumni had. I am greatly looking forward to returning here, as Google is such a massive tech giant and is so integral to everyone’s lives. Although it will be interesting for me to see how these larger tech companies are different from their Bay Area counterparts, I am most excited to engage with smaller tech companies that have their roots in the east coast. For all these reasons, I think TechTrek East will be a very formative experience for me no matter what career path I choose to take. If you read all this, thanks for bearing with me. I am greatly looking forward to meeting all of you and seeing where this journey will take us!

Share this:

Like this:

Related

Post navigation

8 thoughts on “Intro Post”

Wow, you really have a head-start on the class! I’ll be interested to hear your thoughts how the SF and Boston/New York start up ecosystem differ. Very much looking forward to having you in the class. Say “hi” to LIzzie when you see her next!

Hi Katie- what a cool way to spend the summer! True Ventures was one of my favorite visits last spring, and as my TechTrek class will tell you, I’m a ~little~ obsessed with Madison Reed. Can’t wait to hear what you thought about the Bay Area in person!

Hi Katie, it seems like you had a blast this Summer! I would love to hear more about your experience with True Entrepreneur Corps Fellowship and your productive summer in general. Can’t wait to meet you in person!

Hey Katie,
That’s a pretty good Uber run-in story, and awesome you’ve gotten so much startup experience before this class! I looked a little into Hatch Baby and it looks like a very innovative company, I look forward to hearing more about your insider experience there. See you in class!

Loved your intro! I have researched the True Entrepreneur Corps Fellowship and am planning to apply this year. I would love to learn more about your experience with the program and hear your thoughts on trying to pick a career path. Looking forward to seeing you in class!

Hi Katie! The fellowship that you participated in sounds very interesting, and I would love to learn more about it. I am also a big Sharktank fan, and I remember watching the episode with Hatch Baby. It is so cool that you were able to work at that company! You clearly have a lot of knowledge about the startup scene on the West Coast and having never been to California I am excited to hear about your experiences.

Glad to hear that you’ve had such an eventful summer! I’ve also been thinking a lot about the cultural differences between the east and west coasts, so I’m looking forward to hearing more about your experience in Silicon Valley once school starts.

Wow your internship this summer sounds like it was amazing! What an incredible experience to not only get to work in a small start up but also have that dedicated time to attend weekly talks by Bay Area entrepreneurs. The Hatch Baby co-founders also sound like great leaders and I’m sure you were able to learn a lot from both of their very different yet complimentary leadership styles. It sounds like you really made the most of your time in the Bay Area and I look forward to hearing more about it in class this semester!